Bike-sharing company ofo rolls into Sydney

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China's bike-sharing company ofo launched its dockless bike system in Sydney, Australia on Thursday.

Already in 180 cities across 17 countries, the pedal-powered Chinese giant generates over 32 million transactions every day with its 10 million bikes.

The company's chief operating officer Zhang Yanqi said ofo was "thrilled" to bring its service to the southern hemisphere for the first time.

"We are dedicated to making Australian cities as green and liveable as possible by providing the ultimate healthy and low-carbon mobility solution," he said.

ofo has deployed 200 bikes in central Sydney with a plan to launch 200 more across the inner west and eastern suburbs in coming months.

Xinhua Photo‍

Although the phenomenon of bike-sharing has been widely popular for several years across China and a number of other countries, it's only recently that it began to take off down under.

This year oBike and Reddy Go launched their own operations in Australia with success.

Roland Tam, co-founder of Australia's only sharing-economy start up accelerator, the Sharing Hub, told Xinhua that Aussies are beginning to embrace the sharing economy more and more.

In fact, according to a report by Deloitte Access Economics, the sharing economy grew by one billion Australian dollars (771 million US dollars) during the financial year of 2016 in the state of New South Wales alone.

"The sharing economy works because it solves a problem and there is a clear demand for it, because typically it's utilising assets more efficiently," Tam said.

"As people start to understand how it works, the sector grows significantly."

Tam and his business partner Mike Rosenbaum, founded the Sharing Hub along with three other sharing economy startups in order to spawn growth in the industry across Australia.

Although the sector is continuing to expand rapidly, Tam said Aussies still have a way to go if they want to catch up with China.

At his own company Spacer, a peer-to-peer marketplace for storage, "We find we have a high percentage of ethnic users, Chinese users, who very much appreciate making efficient use of assets as well as they can," Tam said.

"I think it is cultural, it has a strong user base in the Chinese community."

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency